Slip sliding away

I had a vivid, terrible nightmare two nights ago about being on the back of J’s motorbike and the motorbike crashing and sliding across the road leaving both of us badly injured and bleeding. This morning on the way to Stanley for an early morning paddle, we hit a patch of diesel and in slow motion slid across the road exactly as it happened in my nightmare. I hit the ground pretty hard and for a moment was confused: am I still dreaming?

Most of Hong Kong’s roads are bordered by high concrete barriers, which I’ve often thought would be hell to barrel into, but we were going very slowly (the sixth sense of the rider looking for patches on the road) and the bike slid away rather than landing on top of us. J was unhurt; and I got up, my arm sore, pretty shaken, a graze on my knee but my favourite Kenneth Cole trousers completely unscathed (I told you I was shallow – the first thing I thought was: damn, my trousers!), and my bargain buy H&M leather jacket as good as new. Hey, looking good in a crisis is what it’s all about! And we came out of it a lot better than we did in my nightmare.

For the second time in the last year, then, I was in Casualty getting an x-ray, this time of my arm. The doctor looked about 20 and he didn’t know where to look when I took my top off – he had to call in a nurse using what looked suspiciously like a panic button beside him on the desk. Ostensibly this was to chaperone me, but I think he was just terrified.

My main concern now, and this illustrates only how much I’ve been sucked in to the shadowy world of outrigging (I guarantee only my sister will spot me in this clip; and yes, we won), is that I might not be able to paddle this weekend.